Carolina Moon (10 page)

“Does he love Herman Melville?” June asked in elementary-schoolteacher
pitch. “No, no, I think not. I’d guess, I’d
fathom
that perhaps he had a cucumber taped to his thigh.”

“Except . . . ,” Sarah turned from where she was standing on a chair and laughed.

“Except I’ve seen it,” June screamed. “And so have you Polly Pureheart!”

“What’s this?” Mack asked. “You saw Jones Jameson?”

“Oops.” June acted like she was about to tiptoe from the room and then thought better of it. “Nah, streaking, remember? We saw everybody in high school, because all the guys liked to streak.”

“I see.”

“That’s right,” Sarah said, her face flushed with laughter. When he left the room, he could hear the two of them in there in hysterics.

“His poor wife,” June said. “Imagine being married to that dick.”

“Yes, a dick with eyes.”

“A dick in loafers!”

“A dick in madras shorts and an Izod shirt.”

“He did introduce us.” Mack leaned into the room where the two were sprawled out on the kitchen floor, half-empty boxes and shredded newspapers all around them. “You look like a couple of crazed hamsters.” This made them laugh harder. When he went back down the hall to the living room, they were still at it.

“A dick with an introduction!”

“Hi there, out there in radioland,” Sarah was saying in a deep sultry voice.

“I’m a dick.”

“I’m a big dick.”

“In loafers.”

“Penny loafers.”

“Bass Weejuns.”

“Cordovan Bass Weejuns.”

“Remember when everybody wanted palomino-colored loafers?”

“Ninth grade,” June said. “I asked for a palomino horse, and my mother got me palomino loafers and a poncho.”

That night the three of them had swapped Jones Jameson stories. It became a contest to think of the worst thing he had done. He was one of those awful people who, for some reason, certain women wanted to save. He was the kind of guy who would whistle at passing coeds and, if they dared look back, would wave his hand and say, “Hell, not you! Who would want you?” Everybody thought he was destined to marry one of the wealthy sorority types who would support him and his habits, but he never made it. He ended up with a quiet, average-looking social worker, who Sarah and June figured was either some really hot somebody in the bedroom or was simply an abused wife. As rumors circulated over time, it was clear that she was just a nice ordinary person who had made a horrible mistake. He made no bones about his activities and routine conquests. He liked to go to Myrtle Beach or over to Fort Bragg for a good time.

June told how once he invited a girl from one of the county schools to meet him at the movies. When she showed, he was waiting there, and he also had every boy in the junior high school lined up at the back of the theater, waiting for him to saunter up midway into the movie with a pair of white cotton underwear wadded up in his waving hand. “Come one, come all,” he was calling. “Tour the Grand Canyon. Let your fingers do the walking.” June was there with her big sister. She saw the girl whose name she couldn’t even recall, Mary Laura or Marie Lynn, sit there until the movie was over; she sat frozen and staring straight ahead at where Mary Tyler Moore was having to decide between life with Elvis, the handsome inner-city doctor, or the convent. “She probably never got over it,” June said. “He wore the underwear on his head to make all of those boys laugh.”

Mack decided not to tell his worst story, simply told them that Jones had continued to do the same kinds of things all through college. He picked up women, got what he could, and then left them in the most humiliating way possible. Mack had, more than once, been the recipient of these stories, witnessed the evidence. He could see Jones pulling a pair of pink nylon panties from the pocket of his jeans and spreading it out on the table like a cat might lay out a half-eaten rodent. “Got some,” he whispered. Then he reached into his other pocket and pulled out a flesh-colored elastic bra. Within minutes he had reached under his shirt and brought forth the girl’s shirt, all neatly rolled up. By then he had identified her as that stacked nigger who was always at Happy Hour. “Left the jeans in the car,” he said. “Left her with her shoes.” He patted his chest and looked around the table. “Hey, I’m a nice guy. I said, Don’t forget your goddamned shoes, honey.”

“What?” There was nervous laughter around the table while Jones told again and again about how easy it was to get a little these days.

“You should have seen those great big white eyes,” he said. “She looked just like what’s his name? Buckwheat. That’s what I was thinking, fucking Buckwheat.”

All but a couple of the rowdiest guys were sitting solemnly, unsure of what to say or do beyond a nervous laugh. “I said, Oh honeychile, I really want to make it good; let’s get out on the ground where we’ve got lots of room to play.” He had to stop and laugh, all the while shaking his head as if in disbelief of what he kept calling her
ignorance
. “You should have seen her all stretched out on that blanket ready and waiting, and I was so drunk, you know, I thought I might fuck her, but then I thought wait, wait, wait, some nice girl who wants to marry me someday, you know how they are, is going to ask me if I
ever slept with a nigger, and there I’d be having to tell her the truth.” He laughed like a maniac, eyes glassy. “Is that classic or what?”

“You left her?”

“Yeah. You should have seen her hop up when she heard the motor! She took off running behind the car like a goddamned dog.”

For years Mack has thought of that girl out there making her way from tree to bush. He thinks of the county girl in the movies. It could have just as easily been Sarah or June;
You gotta meet this cute little piece from my hometown
, he had said to Mack and pointed across the room where Sarah was standing. For years Mack has wanted to find Jones Jameson all alone someplace where he could walk up and confront him, walk up and say what a lousy son of a bitch he is. Mack wishes he were the one who at some time in the past had stood up to Jones Jameson, beat the shit out of him.

Jones was at their wedding. He was IN their wedding, for christsakes. If they had gotten married in any other town, there’s no way he would have even been
asked
to the wedding, but things being what they were (Sarah’s parents socialize with his parents), their hands were tied, or so they were told and then weakly obliged in the midst of all the other ridiculous decisions that had to be made, like what color cummerbund Mack and his dad should wear. Sarah had also invited Tom Lowe to the wedding, certain, she told Mack again and again, that he would never come in a million years. “He hates things like church services,” she said. “But I really do need to ask him. I’d feel really bad if I didn’t.”

Mack hoped she was right, that Tom Lowe would not show up. He imagined a scene right out of
The Graduate
, Tom Lowe in the balcony of the Presbyterian Church screaming “Sarah, Sarah,” and her turning and running to him, fleeing the church, barring the door.

He later discovered, on an afternoon when she was very quiet for no apparent reason, that Tom Lowe had not been there, that she had looked for him as soon as she and her father stepped into the aisle. It turned out that there was a reason she had gotten quiet. She had been unpacking and had found all of the letters he sent her when she first went off to college. She read one aloud to Mack, one where this TomCat had written that he felt things had really changed between them. “The last time I visited you,” he wrote, “I felt so out of place. It has nothing to do with that fraternity boy way of dressing, like you worried it did. Hell, if it was that easy, I’d buy a dozen Izod shirts and I’d stop wearing socks. I just felt so out of place, Sarah, you know? I was a fish out of water and I couldn’t drive fast enough to get myself back where I belong. I said that the University was too far inland and of course that was a joke. But it is true that I feel better here at home where I do have the ocean and where I do feel like I know who I am. Being able to swim the fastest against the river current or swing the farthest from that old rope we used to all mess around with doesn’t count for much up there. Guys like Jones for example. Around here people kind of knew he was a jerk. Around there he is really somebody. All of a sudden WHO you are ain’t about being who you are. I hope you understand. It’s not easy for me, either. Love, Tommy.” She had read the lines slower and slower, voice a little shaky at the end. She took a deep breath, gave Mack a half smile. “PS, if you ever find yourself back in Fulton, I know you’ll find me. I’ll be the king of the hill at low tide. I’ll forever be your TomCat.” With this she shook her head, her face all twisted in an effort not to cry.

“I’m sorry, Mack,” she said and came and buried her face in his chest. He stood, his arms by his side. He felt unable to touch or hold her. “Really, honey.” She pulled his arms around her. “That’s not really why I’m crying.” She shook her head, and he knew again that they had
had false hopes, a late period, so late this time that she had actually come home with a tiny little cotton sleeper and a pair of socks. “Bad luck, bad luck,” her mother had said the last time, when Sarah bought a blanket and silver rattle, so she only showed Mack—and, he suspected, June—before hiding the belongings on the top shelf of what would someday be the nursery.

Then he hugged her close, whispered that it would all be okay, and yet he still couldn’t shake the thoughts of Tom Lowe. She probably often thought about what her life would have been if she had had Tom Lowe’s baby and stayed in this town with him. Would she have been happy upholstering furniture or whatever it is he does for a living? Would they be one of those couples going to the all-you-can-eat salad bar at Denny’s on Saturday night? Would she be happier that way? Even then, he began to think of her driving across town one day in search of him. It would be easy for her to find him, easy for them to pick back up where they left off. If they lived here forever such a meeting
had
to happen; he almost caught himself wishing that it
would
so that they could talk about it once and for all.

June had come over that same afternoon, and Sarah showed her the letter, then told her that she wasn’t pregnant.

“Oh, Sarah,” June said and shook her head. Her eyes were as dark as Sarah’s were light. They called themselves the image sisters—one the negative of the other. “I’m sorry.”

Mack stood by and listened, sensing that June’s apology was for far more than a period. Even now he finds himself wanting to ask June, but he isn’t sure how he would go about saying it. “Did Sarah still love Tom Lowe? Did she see him when we moved back? If this hadn’t happened to her, would there have come a day when she packed a bag and left me?”

SAT. NIGHT, AUGUST
 1976

Dear Wayward One,

Remember how I told you that I used to climb up under the house and stay there for the afternoon like I might be some old stray cat? Well, what I didn’t tell you maybe is how scared I felt many of those times. I would sit there and watch the light shift to the late afternoon while I dozed in and out in almost a dreamy way, my feet coated in the cool black dirt there. I can close my eyes right now and feel that buzzy cotton-headed kind of way, can smell the rust of our old pipes mixing with the scent of gardenia. My mother loved gardenias and when they bloomed in early summer, she had them all over our house, single blossoms floating in little silver bowls. I love the late afternoon light, the slant, the color, but for some reason it makes me feel so sad and lonely I could just curl up in a dark corner and cry. When I heard the news about you it was like I’d been waiting my whole life for a
reason
to feel the way I do. I have always felt a sadness deep within, an anchor that never allowed me to float too far. Even before I was ever really happy, I was afraid of losing happiness. I don’t know how a person comes to feel so undeserving while at the same time feeling powerful, like she could beat
up the whole damn world, but that’s me. The floors would creak over my head, footsteps walking around in a different world as far as I was concerned. My world was that
other
one; the one there under the house, the feelings I didn’t have names for. What I did have was long, scratched-up legs and a broad freckled face. I had shoulders on me that would have put any old boy out on a field trying to play football to shame. Just yesterday my husband handed me a news clipping all about these little girls that are taking to the fields with their baseballs and footballs. I envy them even right this second because I think of how good it must be to be
told
to knock the hell out of something or someone, how good it must be to take off and start running, and then keep running, keep going till you have sweated away whatever anger and bitterness had found its way up and into your skin. Oh I can do a little workout, ride a bike machine or something but I’m too old by now to get it all out of my skin. It’s like poison, those old sad feelings, and by now I guess I’m addicted to them. By now I guess I’m just the way that I’ll always be. And isn’t it strange—other than your bed, the place I most often wish myself is under the house with the cool darkness, the rich-smelling earth. Sometimes I picture you sitting there under my house instead of where you really are. You reach inside the little houses I have built by mounding the rich dirt over my foot, packing it tightly and then easing my foot out to leave a cave. From each you pull a prize: colored glass, cat-eye marble, ball of twine, some money I lifted from a big man’s pocket when he told me to reach in and see what I might find. People are so stupid about what children do and do not know. You know that firsthand, don’t you? You told me once that you feared your son was like a piece of sponge thirsty for anything you might have to offer. I see him around town from time to time and I’d say that somebody has offered him some goodness. He looks fine but of course you can’t always go on that.

My mother once said to me, “Don’t we have a good life, darling?” and
she smoothed my hair back with her hand. “My but you feel so cool,” she said, “like someone from a grave.” By then I had washed my feet under the old pump at the far end of our yard and she had no idea that I had spent my whole day right under her very feet. I think of that all the time lately. I hear my mother’s voice saying
like someone from a grave
and I begin to think that maybe there has always been a part of me that
was
dead, or a part getting ready to be dead. Those words come to me most often now at the end of the day, my favorite time of day. Remember when we used to sit out on that old rickety porch sipping our beers and watching the ocean? We might watch for hours, seeing the tide all the way in, watching the sticks you had staked into the sand as markers. The world would spin us right out into darkness and then it was so hard to turn on the sobering lights, so hard to face the dirty shrimp pot, pink foam crusted on its edge, and the dirty plates, empty cans. All in the flip of a switch the dream ended. Wake-up call. I heard it just hours ago when my husband came in from work and found me out on the back stoop staring off into the pine trees that hide us from the highway. And now he’s waiting for me, there in the light of our bedroom and here I am writing this letter. I thought I could stop doing it. I planned to stop, but today is an anniversary. It’s my birthday and I’m just now starting to wonder how many more are ahead of me. Do I want them? Sometimes, like right now at the end of a long hard day, I have great doubts; but then by morning the doubts have retreated and I’m feeling hopeful again, looking for a mission, a cause. These letters are just another distraction, just another secret; most of my life is, you know.